Rating: 2/10

This movie has practically every living comedian in it — David Cross, Cheryl Hines, Chris Parnell, Michael McKean, Ray Romano, Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, Estelle Harris, Richard Kind, and the list goes on. If you were combine all the jokes possible from all these funny people, you would have a very funny movie. And yet, this movie is very moderately funny.

Its main man is One Eyed Jack Faro (Woody Harrelson), kind of a Keith Richards of the casino world. His excessive lifestyle has lost him the casino he inherited from his dad. The Grand poker tournament is his chance to win it back.

Not being a poker player myself, I can’t vouch for the quality of the poker games on hand, but I have a strong hunch that this is no Rounders. The tournament does give the movie momentum, but there’s just too many shabby ideas thrown in to really add up to a good film. The Grand also heavily borrows from movies like Best in Show and Blades of Glory. As in Best in Show, it has its atypical tournament finalist Andy Andrews (Richard Kind) and it copies its over-the-top superbowl character introductions from Blades of Glory. In fact, much of this film feels like a commercial, or a bad parody of poker TV. Perhaps it’s tartgeting folks with extremely low attention spans, because just as things start to get slow, BAMN, the next loud song or flashy segue.

Woody Harrelson and Cheryl Hines are quite good, but others such as Ray Romano or Michael McKean just drone on and it gets very old, very fast. I do like a lot of the movies that The Grand copies from, but I can’t say I like The Grand.

Filed under: 2008 by A.B.